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I have a question/suggestion. Why has no one, apparently, picked up on the FBI report from which Durbin read during his meltdown on the Senate floor? Am I the only American who is alarmed that agents of the FBI, one of our premier national counter-terror organizations, seem far more worried about the creature comforts of terrorists than with gaining the intelligence necessary to stop them?
If a maniacal terrorist killer is a little too hot, a little too cold, or forced to listen to insipid pop music, I must confess that I care not at all. I see it as a good thing that people who would be only too happy to cut off the heads of Americans or vaporize their children in their schools are behind bars. I even see good, domestically and internationally, in mighty jihadists being so afraid of Americans that they soil their jammies. May it be so everywhere. And I am delighted that some Americans, the President and Secretary of Defense among them, realize that terrorists are not garden variety domestic criminals and that they must not be treated as such. But I am worried: Why doesn't at least one agent of our own FBI understand these things? And if they don't, should they be working for the FBI?
Just a thought...
Mike McDaniel
Posted by Mike McDaniel at June 18, 2005 04:54 PM
The report itself isn't that remarkable Mike, it's Durbins claim that it sounds like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Gulags that is beyond the pale. What an insult to the actual survivors of those death camps - a US Senator demeans the suffering they endured, far beoynd "it's too hot" or "it's too cold".
The Soviet system of government is the model of choice for the Left - that they attempt to point to it's inherent excesses as examples of all that is bad about the world while simultaneously wishing they could launch a global socialist state today is - to use the obvious term - Orwellian.
Amnesty Interntional's actions, as recounted above, are also an obvious insult to those who survived the true Gulag. That they would, whether by ignorance or arogance, even request a survivor to deny the horror of his own past in such a way speaks volumes for what that organizaton has become. Note also that they expected their man to respond favorably to their request, not because their claims were true, but because he had been "adopted" by their organization. In other words, he was being told "you owe us, sucker, and it's payback time"
If Amnesty Internatiional had any sense of honor or decency they would toss their current crop of overlords now and publicize the response of this courageous man as far and wide as they possibly could. But no, mediocrity has triumphed in that organization.
Or something worse.
Unspeakable.
Posted by Old Soldier at June 18, 2005 05:19 PM
I have to agree with Mike. If we don't start to get, as a nation, that we are at war we are in real trouble. By the way if you don't think this is a war ask the other side.
I was in Vietnam and I remember coming home through Seattle and being spit on. Not a pleasant experience at all but even then I can't remember our elected repersentatives using the kind of retoric Durbin used with respect to the soldiers serving in Vietnam.
I know you have all heard the tails of Saddam having his enemys shot and then sending the bill to their families. Maybe he had a good idea with that one except I would send the bill to Howard Dean.
Posted by Doug at June 18, 2005 05:42 PM
The voters from Durbin's state, need to send a message loud and clear to this idiot.
Your remarks are hurting my son or my daughter who us willing to serve in our military. You are putting them in more danger, with this kind of nonsense. Durbin needs to love it or leave it. Evidently he needs to leave the political arena.
We don't need politicians like him working for the enemy. He is a Jane Fonda, in a different time.
Posted by A Military Mom at June 18, 2005 06:11 PM
Amnesty's foolishness was in not realizing a survivor of a real Gulag would have the real courage to tell the real truth.
Of course, they also know his story won't get much attention. Hence it's being buried in a Saturday Washington Post.
This should be at least as big a story as Amnesty's original fundraiser - I mean claim. But it's not, and tomorrow the Post will be talking about how gitmo is giving the US a black eye.
Posted by Farmer at June 18, 2005 07:23 PM
Funny how y'all object to Amnesty International these days. I didn't hear any protest when your lying president cited Amnesty's reports of Saddam's human rights abuses.
Posted by Willysnout at June 18, 2005 07:40 PM
Perhaps it's because those were ABUSES, instead of inconveniences. Amnesty International is trying to get having the temperature too hot or cold (and what was cold? 60 degrees? Less? I've shivered in 70 degree rooms, when the humidity was low and I was inactive with air blowing across me. Come on, let's quantify things here.) equated to starvation, limb-lopping and the like.
The Jawa Report: Kos Says U.S. Torture 'Equal' To that of Saddam Hussein (A comparison)
Amnesty International's done some pretty amazing things over the years. This, however, isn't one of them. They've lost their sense of proportion, imho. This is a big problem, and bodes ill for their credibility in the future.
J.
Posted by JLawson at June 19, 2005 04:55 AM
"Funny how y'all object to Amnesty International these days. I didn't hear any protest when your lying president cited Amnesty's reports of Saddam's human rights abuses."
That's because we didn't have an official of AI ADMITTING that they were making things up like we do here.
Posted by TomB at June 19, 2005 04:56 AM
"Funny how y'all object to Amnesty International these days. I didn't hear any protest when your lying president cited Amnesty's reports of Saddam's human rights abuses."
So are you equating Saddam's human rights abuses (sadistic murder and torture on a country wide basis) to what is happening in Gitmo? Don't you realize the difference? Or maybe you don't ... that is what is truly frightening about the AI apologists - they seem to have lost all sense of reality in their hatred of the war and the right.
Posted by Alex at June 19, 2005 02:19 PM
Right vs. left approach to Gitmo name calling seems to have a lot to do with looking at the group as a whole - arguably treated ok - vs. individuals who have had horrendous treatment, assuming they are not guilty.
As we have learned in the US since high school civics classes, one presumes innocence absent proof to the contrary - conviction with due process, lawyers, access to witnesses, no coerced statements. The USSCT has, in my view, correctly said we cannot throw out the presumption simply based on Chaney's assurance that whoever got water-boarded had it coming. Even one lynching (or near lynching) is intolerable, even if the lynchee is said by the deputy sheriff to have "had it coming."
Left idea is one case of water-boarding (if never disavowed, and I have heard no disavowal) is cause for name calling. GOP says, in effect, we need to see more bad cases - say 260 or 520 - before we can use the label.
GOP approach seems fine, unless that one presumed innocent water-boarded detainee happens to be you, your brother, your father, etc. May be time to recall "whatsoever you do to the least of your brothers...."
Is this sedition or treason? No doubt under standards used by Stalin or Germany in 33-45. Not sure we want to apply those standards, even if they might be efficient and help win the "war".
Posted by cfw at June 19, 2005 03:18 PM
Mike, I flat don't believe there was a real e-mail. It all smells. No real info, strange expressions, the entire premise that the FBI guy would use e-mail. Too big a disconnect from the culture of the Bureau. Either Durbin threw that in as an amusing fillip or he fell for a little 'creativity' from the Left's documentation specialists - Joe Wilson or some clone from Kos-land. From 40+ years of being in and around the armed forces and Washington agencies, I would wager $10,000 on the proposition that the e-mail is bogus.
A look at the e-mail's header data and the archives of his POP server would probably make my point. Tracing these things is far easier now.
Posted by Gordon at June 19, 2005 03:36 PM
One case of "horrendous treatment" does not make a gulag any more than one sarin shell in Iraq makes a WMD stockpile.
Posted by Callimachus at June 19, 2005 04:07 PM
CFW,
Would it be acceptable to put each detainee before a military tribunal, then execute the guilty, and release the innocent?
jp
Posted by JP at June 19, 2005 04:19 PM
Amnesty International's done some pretty amazing things over the years. This, however, isn't one of them.
You object because AI criticized the wrong entity. In your world, the United States can do no wrong. Everyone must bow down before your false god, George W. Bush.
Posted by Willysnout at June 19, 2005 08:03 PM
Mike, I flat don't believe there was a real e-mail. It all smells. No real info, strange expressions, the entire premise that the FBI guy would use e-mail. Too big a disconnect from the culture of the Bureau.
The FBI uses e-mail. The e-mail came from the FBI pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The American right wing runs from the truth like cockroaches from the light. You have no principles or morals that you won't abandon on a whim, and there is no lie you won't tell.
Posted by Willysnout at June 19, 2005 08:05 PM
You object because AI criticized the wrong entity.
Willy, it's official. You know NOTHING.
Have you not been reading any of these comments? Or are you simply not comfortable with any arguments outside the Kos-sphere?
Criticism is fine. Criticism is good. Bush is criticized often in this forum. We object because AI has destroyed their credibility by criticizing a political opponent all of of proportion for blantantly political (and probably financial) reasons.
Have Kos send someone over here with a few working brain-cells left. You're not making the grade.
Posted by FreeWilly at June 19, 2005 08:33 PM
Criticism is fine. Criticism is good. Bush is criticized often in this forum. We object because AI has destroyed their credibility by criticizing a political opponent all of of proportion for blantantly political (and probably financial) reasons.
You object because you're a far right-wing Republican who denies the truth, hates the freedom he claims to want to uphold, has no priniciples or morals he won't abandon on a whim, and is perfectly content to use the Iraq War for partisan purposes even if it means sending thousands of Americans to be killed or wounded for nothing at all.
Posted by Willysnout at June 19, 2005 09:00 PM
I object because an AI representative asked a survivor of a real Gulag to lie and claim that Gitmo was like the Gulag. The Gulag survivor told the AI guy that they were not the same thing, and the AI guy said, "I know."
He lied, he admits he lied, and he dilutes the horror that was the Gulags when he equates them with the stuff at Gitmo.
Furthermore, Willysnout. there are people of integrity on the left who *also* have a serious problem with outrageous remarks by Durbin and AI- because they recognize that once AI publicizes their total lack of proportion they lose the publicity war. Nobody will take them seriously anymore. They've played Henny Penny one too many times. You know what? I don't like everything I hear about what's going on at Gitmo. I'm disgusted by the use of female soldiers I've heard about. There are things I've read about that I object to and I want them investigated- but when AI and its fan club equates the serious discomfort of detainees with the murder of 1.5 million innocents, _and admits they know that it isn't really an accurate comparison, they lose all credibility. When the watch dog starts barking, snarling, and snapping at every passer by without discretion, bites the mailman, the pizza delivery guy and the grumpy boss just the same as he bites the burglar, it's time to get a new watch dog.
If you really are concerned about reports of abuse you'll see the logical problems with what AI has done and you'd criticize them too.
WE need a new watch dog.
Posted by DeputyHeadmistress at June 19, 2005 09:31 PM
Willy: AI was telling the truth about Saddam Hussein. They are lying about Guantanamo.
Do you understand the difference? You throw around the word "lying," but I'm not sure you have the wit or moral fiber to know what it means.
Posted by ScottM at June 19, 2005 10:20 PM
Compare the U.S. military's torture techniques to the ones used in Stalin's notorious Lubyanka prison in Moscow. This is from The Gulag Archipelago, by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn:
Preliminary humiliation was another approach. … At the Lubyanka, Aleksandra O___ refused to give the testimony demanded. She was transferred to Lefortovo. In the admitting office, a woman jailer ordered her to undress, allegedly for a medical examination, took away her clothes, and locked her in a “box” naked. At that point the men jailers began to peer through the peephole and to appraise her feminine attributes with loud laughs. If one were systematically to question former prisoners, many more such examples would emerge. They all had but a single purpose: to dishearten and humiliate.
Intimidation was very widely used and very varied. Another form of intimidation was threatening the prisoner with a prison worse than the one he was in.
Sound effects: Or two megaphones are constructed out of rolled-up cardboard, and two interrogators, coming close to the prisoner, bellow in both ears: “Confess, you rat!” The prisoner is deafened; sometimes he actually loses his sense of hearing.
A cigarette is put out on the accused’s skin.
Light effects involve the use of an extremely bright electric light in the small, white-walled cell or “box” in which the accused is held – a light which is never extinguished. Your eyelids become inflamed, which is very painful.
Prison begins with the box, in other words, what amounts to a closet or packing case. … The human being who has just been taken from freedom, still in a state of inner turmoil, ready to explain, to argue, to struggle is, when he first sets foot in prison, clapped into a “box,” which sometimes has a lamp and a place where he can sit down, but which sometimes is dark and constructed in such a way that he can only stand up and even then is squeezed against the door.
Sleeplessness, which they quite failed to appreciate in medieval times.
The above method was further implemented by an assembly line of interrogators. Not only were you not allowed to sleep, but for three or four days shifts of interrogators kept up a continuous interrogation.
The accused could be compelled to stand on his knees.Then there is the method of simply compelling the prisoner to stand there.
Punishment cells. No matter how hard it was in the ordinary cells, the punishment cells were always worse. In the punishment cell a human being was systematically worn down by cold (In Sukhonovna Prison there were also hot punishment cells). There were various aspects to punishment cells – for example, dampness and water.
Starvation has already been mentioned in combination with other methods. Actually the starvation technique, like interrogation at night, was an integral element in the entire system of coercion.
Beatings — of a kind that leave no marks. As everyone knows, a blow of the fist in the solar plexus, catching the victim in the middle of a breath, leaves no mark whatever. The Lefortovo Colonel Sidorov, in the postwar period, used to take a “penalty kick” with his overshoes at the dangling genitals of male prisoners.
Or bridling (also known as “the swan dive”). A long piece of rough toweling was inserted between the prisoner’s jaws like a bridle; the ends were then pulled back over his shoulders and tied to his heels. Just try lying on your stomach like a wheel, with your spine breaking – and without water and food for two days!
It's a sad day when the Republican Party becomes the promoter of Stalinesque torture.
Posted by Willysnout at June 19, 2005 11:41 PM
Not that any of you are interested in what's true. See, to be part of the American right wing, you have to be willing to abandon any priciples or morals on someone else's whom. You must defend your consciousness against facts, and you must be ready to lie about everything at all times.
Posted by Willysnout at June 19, 2005 11:44 PM
You know, it's really a shame. Amnesty could be doing GOOD for a lot of people right now in Zimbabwe, the Sudan, Iran, Burma, etc. People are dying.
Yet, Amnesty is busy pissing away its credibility by prioritizing how America treated the 20th September 11 hijacker.
And liberals are happy about this?
Posted by Shame at June 20, 2005 01:48 AM
The United States military used the very same torture tactics perfected in the 20th Century by Stalin's NKVD and Hitler's Gestapo. The Taguba report cited "horrific abuses," and the Red Cross said American actions were "tantamount to torture" and appeared to be "standard operating procedure."
http://www.w3ar.com/a.php?k=489
The Republican Party, once the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, is fast becoming the American Torture Party. It hates the truth, it hates freedom, it loves war and it is indifferent to death and destruction. It's a sad day when the Republicans adopt the methods and values of Stalin and Hitler. It's even sadder when the U.S. military allows those values to be imposed on it with nary a peep.
Posted by Willysnout at June 20, 2005 06:38 AM
"Don't you think that there's an enormous difference?" I asked him.
"Sure," he said, "but after all, it attracts attention to the problem of Guantanamo detainees."
I heard the very same argument from a Democrat just yesterday when I asked him what he thought about Durbin's comments.
"Well, sure its over-the-top, but if it draws attention to the issue..."
So, I guess lies, slander and aid and comfort to the enemy are okay as long as they bring "attention to the issue."
I tried to point out to him that by engaging in such ridiculous and disgusting rhetoric, a person truly concerned with prison treatment was makign it more likely it would be dismissed. I don't know if it sunk through...
Posted by Captain Wrath at June 20, 2005 01:09 PM
Willysnout,
"The Republican Party, once the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, is fast becoming the American Torture Party. It hates the truth, it hates freedom, it loves war and it is indifferent to death and destruction. It's a sad day when the Republicans adopt the methods and values of Stalin and Hitler."
Try looking up the Nazi/Stalinist methods of propaganda and the "big lie". You might see something of yourself there, but I doubt it...
Posted by Captain Wrath at June 20, 2005 01:13 PM
So, I guess lies, slander and aid and comfort to the enemy
Not one word of Sen. Durbin's speech was untrue. The Taguba report itself cited "horrendous abuses." The Red Cross cited abuses "tantmount to torture" and said that "methods of physical and psychological coercion used by the interrogators appeared to be part of the standard operating procedures by military intelligence personnel to obtain confessions and extract information."
[Greyhawk notes: For more on the Taguba report see here. Key quote from Taguba: "We did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition and I believe that they collaborated with several MI (military intelligence) interrogators at the lower level," Tugaba said. Now back to Willy]
Taguba Report:
http://www.agonist.org/annex/taguba.htm
Red Cross Report:
http://cryptome.org/icrc-report.htm
And Seymour Hersh, perhaps this country's foremost investigative journalist, has extensively detailed how the CIA's secret "Copper Green" torture program was combined with forced sexual perversion and then applied to the Iraq War.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/040524fa_fact
The methods of torture used in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere by the U.S. military were pioneered in the 20th Century by Stalin's NKVD and Hitler's Gestapo.
http://www.w3ar.com/a.php?k=489
As for the often-repeated lie that abuses were few and isolated, American records forced into the public eye through the work of the American Civil Liberties Union show that Durbin cited only the tip of the tip of the iceberg.
http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/
The real issue is the American right wing's hatred of truth, freedom, justice, ethics, integrity, principle and morality. The Republican Party, which once spoke for the individual in the face of government power, now speaks for unlimited government power including capricious torture, war on a whim and the ability to lie about anything and defame anyone who should happen to cross the government's corrupt and crooked path.
Remember, we live in a country that once freed its slaves. We brought freedom, human rights and self-determination to uncounted millions. George W. Bush and his brainwashed followers have decided that this entire legacy, and the principles that formed its foundation, are now irrelevant. They are yesterday's clothed to be casually discarded in favor of the garments of torture and repression.
Hearts and minds? The Republic Party hates an open heart and a free mind wherever it exists.
Posted by Willysnout at June 20, 2005 04:15 PM
Willy's repeated lies are torturous, he's a loser!
Posted by An American at June 20, 2005 04:19 PM
Willysnout = illogical troll
Never argue with a fool, a passerby may not be able to determine which is the fool
Never wrassle with a pig. The pig loves it and you both get dirty.
'Nuff said . . .
Posted by G5 at June 20, 2005 04:54 PM
G5 = amoral coward. Runs from the truth like a cockroach from the light. Loves torture, o.k. with combat death as long as it's someone ELSE's.
Posted by Willysnout at June 20, 2005 05:22 PM
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